Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday September 04, 2012 @12:42PM
from the waiting-on-the-steambox dept.

redletterdave writes "Valve is reportedly interested in building hardware. The Bellevue, Wash.-based software developer added a job posting to its site on Tuesday morning for an industrial designer. We're frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space though, so we're jumping in,' the posting said. 'Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There's a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked.'"

Nuh uh! You're just crusty and old and resistant to change. How dare you want stable, mature interfaces rather than ever changing bullshit to justify the job of some hipster designer. What next? You're going to tell me we shouldn't ditch steering wheels and pedals in cars? FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING LUDDITE!!!!

Actually studies have shown that people react better in emergency situations with a joystick, in that they're more likely to steer and brake at the same time. I can't say whether it makes you able to take a corner more optimally, but in passenger cars, where safety is the primary concern as opposed to a race car, a steering wheel and pedals isn't as good as it gets.

How unenlightened, I've always wanted to put a d-pad on the thumb side of the mouse for easy weapon switching instead of reaching keys in odd spaces. Even with keyboard customization distributing the load to a hand that is more idle (the aiming hand) that merely only moves the mouse increases efficiency.

I've had tonnes of insights into how hardware and user interfaces as well could be better designed. Perhaps you need to learn about the fact that you don't live in reality but only your awareness? i.e. w

The scroll wheel has flaws in that you can over scroll, and miss the weapon you actually want to get, a d-pad lets you just assign weapons to each direction your thumb say rests in the middle and each weapon is equidistant (short) from the center. With a mousewheel you have to cycle through weapons list and you can often miss during harried fights or you have to slow down. Not my idea of accurate controls in tense highspeed action games where reaction time matters.

If you are over scrolling then blame the GUI friend, because they should have set the scroll sensitivity correctly. Personally I use this as one of the gauges of whether a title is good or not, a good GUI should easily allow you to do the actions you are required to perform in the heat of battle while a bad interface design will leave your frustrated and pissed.

For an example of a bad user interface design please watch this Angry Joe review [angryjoeshow.com] and watch how many times he says things like "WTF? Stop...stop it!

Oh that is a neat one. I grabbed the razer one with 12 on the side, I end up basically using about 3/4 of the 12 buttons on it because the rest are just too hard to comfortably reach. Moreover, if you stretch weird I have a nasty habit of shifting the mouse around and upsetting my aim/view which is a bit frustrating. For a bunch of them I have to sort of counter balance the mouse so the thumb press doesnt send it off into oblivion, all in all I'd just say it isn't that comfortable.

Hell if he doesn't want to use that (why I don't know, a wheel makes it crazy fast to spin through a weapon switch) there are several gamer mice that have a rocker switch on the right side where the thumb would rest on a traditional mouse.

BTW I know this is a little childish but to all those FOSS zealots that were "Oh no, GabeN is doing this because he really believes in Linux!" allow me to say TOLD YOU SO, he's building a fricking Steambox because Ballmer waved his flabby ass in GabeN's face with the whole

My mouse already has two buttons on each side of the mouse (although the two on your non-mouse hand are hard to press so I don't usually map anything to them).

Plus, Valve games already do weapon switching via the mouse wheel. Just make sure you turn on fast weapon switching or it'll drive you mad (you mean I have to click the primary mouse button before it'll switch weapons?!)

You want to use spatial memory and touch feedback to help guarantee the player won't over-shoot the side thumb buttons. i.e. There is an optimal balance between minimizing the number of buttons and maximizing the number of buttons.

I've found 3 side thumb buttons to be great. Another post in this thread suggested a D-Pad for the thumb -- I think that would work even better yet. Any more then that though and you are now starting to incur penalties.

I guess that makes sense in games where one weapon makes you move faster.

I'm used to playing TF2. Melee weapons don't make you move faster in TF2*. There are really only a handful of weapons in the entire game where you'd want to have a weapon selected but not switched to, out of something like 200 unique weapons in the game.

* There are two exceptions:1. The Gloves of Running Urgently [teamfortress.com] make the Heavy (one of the two slowest class in the game) move at nearly the speed of the standard classes, but the Heavy

Valve games already do weapon switching via the mouse wheel.Having played FPS for ~ 20+ years, using the mouse wheel to select weapons is incredibly slow compared to keyboard since you need to cycle through them to get to the right weapon. It is significantly faster to just press a single key to select the correct weapon.

I've been playing multiplayer FPS games on and off since the original Doom in 1993 (10Base2 coax LAN ftw). However, I took a break from them from sometime in 2003 (I know because Unreal Tournament 2003 was out, but 2004 wasn't) to 2008 when I picked up Team Fortress 2. Unfortunately, when I came back to them is when I picked up the habit of using the mouse wheel.

I've played TF2 for the past 4.25 or so years. Unlike most games, TF2 has you start out with all the equipment for your class (Loadouts [teamfortress.com] aren't i

> I've been playing multiplayer FPS games on and off since the original Doom in 1993 (10Base2 coax LAN ftw)

Same.:-)

In TF2 I usually play medic and don't usually need to worry about keybinds, but when I do play other classes you're points about TF2 I agree with.:-) Valve has done a nice job of streamlining the numbers of weapons each class needs by striking a good balance between not enough and too many. Maybe I just suck at playing Spy but for some reason I find the keybinds not to be as intuitive as

How unenlightened, I've always wanted to put a d-pad on the thumb side of the mouse for easy weapon switching instead of reaching keys in odd spaces. Even with keyboard customization distributing the load to a hand that is more idle (the aiming hand) that merely only moves the mouse increases efficiency.

So why don't you already have such a mouse? It's not like multi-button gaming mice don't exist.

That isn't a dpad it has buttons in similar orientation of a dpad, not only that the orientation of the buttons are off and the side of the mouse is too sharp (straight). More importantly the buttons are not aligned properly, and my 'dpad' meant variations on d-pad like design. Not just cutting and pasting parts I had something specific and custom designed in mind.

I understand but these problems are intractable, you can't actually control how other people read your message on the internet. I was a bit snide in my OP but being instantly downvoted to zero and then all the hyena's show up (moronic gamers) who start digging in just I'm not immune from being human as well. No doubt I should have probably worded my OP better, and by "d-pad" I had a custom tailored mouse design in mind, because you actually have to play around with and refine the design through testing a

The scroll wheel has flaws in that you can over scroll, and miss the weapon you actually want to get, a d-pad lets you just assign weapons to each direction your thumb say rests in the middle and each weapon is equidistant (short) from the center. With a mousewheel you have to cycle through weapons list and you can often miss during harried fights or you have to slow down. Not my idea of accurate controls in tense highspeed action games where reaction time matters.

Just because you're incapable of filing to memory all your weapons and the order which they scroll and lack the manual dexterity to precisely and quickly scroll to the desired weapon does not mean the rest of us are incapable.

Further, weapon slots are designed in such a way the weapons are appropriately clustered. FPS have been greatly moving towards two weapon games. In fact, I cannot think of a game that has more than 3 combat weapons. So at most you're usually scrolling up or down ONCE to get to the othe

Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years

Maybe the reason for this is the basic form works. The design of the wheel hasn't changed much in a 5 thousand years either. I wonder why.

I beg to differ. The basic design requirement of a wheel is that it's round and rolls, and I'll certainly grant you that this aspect of wheels hasn't changed. However, a rough-hewn wooden round, such as used in the simplest of carts, bears very little other resemblance to the three-spoked carbon-fiber performance bicycle wheels I see with some frequency on my morning bicycle commute. Sure, both are round and roll, but otherwise, there's thousands of years of difference between them.

So what are the design requirements for computer input? You could start by looking at the requirements of a keyboard and a mouse: 1) Must have all the keys required to input at least ASCII. 2) Must have some kind of pointer-device control, ideally with at least two buttons.

So sure, you can have your basic flat keyboard, and a basic mouse. Or you could have something quite different, like this [disabledonline.com], or this [disabledonline.com], or this [artlebedev.com], or this [alphagrips.com] (what I'm actually using to type this message).

I beg to differ. The basic design requirement of a wheel is that it's round and rolls, and I'll certainly grant you that this aspect of wheels hasn't changed. However, a rough-hewn wooden round, such as used in the simplest of carts, bears very little other resemblance to the three-spoked carbon-fiber performance bicycle wheels I see with some frequency on my morning bicycle commute. Sure, both are round and roll, but otherwise, there's thousands of years of difference between them.

Or you could have something quite different, like this [disabledonline.com], or this [disabledonline.com], or this [artlebedev.com], or this [alphagrips.com] (what I'm actually using to type this message).

You seem to be missing the point. Valve seems to be saying that they're not seeing the kind of innovation they want in the computer hardware space, and point to the keyboard and mouse saying "Look! These aren't changing to therefore there is no innovation."

The obvious answer is they're not changing because they don't need to. It's like pointing to the wheel and saying "It's still the same shape, there's no innovation there!" Yes, in 5 thousand years we've adding on whiz-bang features and materials, but its circumference is still pi*d because that's what works best. Anything else is sub-optimal.

For the mouse, perhaps it's not exactly *optimal* for for our current user interfaces its pretty much the best input we have. I think for any change in the input, we're going to also need a change in the software. History shows this to be the case, as the mouse didn't really do much until we needed it for a GUI. You point to voice recognition and eye tracking, and a whole slew of other input devices, yet you neglect the fact that all these things exist yet no one uses them. Again, I believe the reason is because the deviate from the optimal input device for our GUIs (mouse), and in order for some of these alternative inputs to become as mainstream as mouse, we're going to need a user interface to compliment them. That is to say, while voice command sucks for navigating our current 2D GUI, mouse would suck for navigating a voice-centric UI.

On a final note, I as well applaud Valve for looking into a better way of doing things. I just want to be cautious and say I hope their efforts are not misguided, and that in their quest to find a better mouse or other input device, they don't instead just invent something different for the sake of being different.

The mouse has evolved, and natural selection has killed the old style mice.

I mean, we have mousewheels now which seem to be essential (try using a mouse without one - they get annoying quick). But you have mice that have tried other things - IBM used to put their red nubs on them for scrolling, Apple put a touchpad on them, etc. And we have mice, trackballs, and touchpads (which have evolved greatly from their useless postage-stamp sized days to the acres of surface on the Apple ones).

Hell, there were laptops with built-in mice (not trackballs or touchpads or eraser points, but actual mouse).

Innovation may have stopped because they've matured, and we've reached a stage where they're really not much you can do that hasn't been tried before and natural selection killed it. Plus, considering a basic mouse is usable, costs probably $5 assembled tops, and is good enough (not a far cry from Jobs' demand that the Mac mouse cost $20 tops, though Apple makes terrible, horrendous mice (and always have), perhaps that's why they use touchpads).

Keyboards, again you see a bit, but there's only so much you can do with the key layout before people can't type on them anymore. Maybe if you made it a key pad for gaming or something.

Maybe a joypad can be improved a bit - though something like the Xbox360 one is pretty damn comfortable to use and definitely one I use for playing games on the PC with...

If you don't dogfood your own tech why should I care to use it or believe it's any good? If it was so great and wonderful then the Valve people would be the first using it since they supposedly so lament how keybard and mice apparently haven't changed much. I'll also ditch my desktop and large screens for touchscreen iPads to do my work the moment Apple's own engineers do so. Since it's highly doubtful they will do so, I see no need to subject myself to such a poorly responsive and non-ergonomic interfaces

Holy crap. That alpha grip thing looks like the most awesome and convenient input method ever. Does it actually work like they market it?:O

I looked into alternate keyboards years ago when repetitive stress was threatening to render me unable to work, and the AlphaGrip was the best option at the time. The other alternates I found were several hundred dollars and with no return policies, while the AlphaGrip was maybe $100 and had a one-month try-it-out period. So I gave it a month, and liked it enough that I now have two (one for my day job, and one for home).

That said, there's definitely a learning curve -- don't expect to type very fast for

But you're wrong... it doesn't work. The current mouse/keyboard only works when sitting at a desk. Try it on your couch and you're screwed. The Gamepad works on the couch but is severely limited in its function. We need the easy of use of one with the advanced functionality of the other. And this is just 1 component. Sounds like valve wants to look at more than just keyboards...

But you're wrong... it doesn't work. The current mouse/keyboard only works when sitting at a desk.

That's like saying the wheel doesn't work unless it's rolling on the road. Try flying with it and you're screwed. The keyboard and mouse have been optimized to accomplish work on our desktop GUIs, and our GUIs have been optimized to work with mouse and keyboard. To point at this and say (as Valve is) "Things haven't changed much, there must be a problem with innovation" seems to sidestep the question of whether there is any real problem we have for which we need to innovate a solution.

Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years

Maybe the reason for this is the basic form works. The design of the wheel hasn't changed much in a 5 thousand years either. I wonder why.

Actually, the design has changed. We don't make them out of stone anymore, we pay special attention to friction, and plenty of other attributes. It's the the overall idea that hasn't changes; "being round".

A lot of PC games now days support the Xbox 360 controller right out of the box. Also, you no longer have to constantly upgrade your system to play games well. Most of the developers are developing with console being the lowest common denominator. Since new and more powerful console do not come around very often, the games are not designed to use cutting edge hardware.

That's all irrelevant. What matters is that keyboard and mouse gamers beat the pants off of gamepad players whenever they go head to head. The keyboard and mouse is the superior controller by the only metric that matters, performance.

The keyboard and mouse is the superior controller by the only metric that matters, performance.

Only if you choose a style of game that caters to that control method and agree that performance is the only metric that matters. Take any arcade driving, shooting or dancing game, replace the specialized, context-appropriate control methods with your better "performing", keyboard and mouse controllers and watch the dust collect. Would you rather play a head to head fighting game with an arcade stick or a keyboard/mouse?

Even if FPS games are the most relevant to Valve, perhaps they see that as a problem to

Who says the gamepad is the preferred way that things should work? This is a question about whether or not there should be more methods for input in general. The keyboard/mouse combo is great, since it's INCREDIBLY versatile, but it's shoehorned into all sorts of places where it may not be the best option available, or else where its widespread adoption has actually stunted the growth of better alternatives.

I'm curious how gamers using a keyboard/mouse would compare against gamers using something like a Wii

That's all irrelevant. What matters is that keyboard and mouse gamers beat the pants off of gamepad players whenever they go head to head. The keyboard and mouse is the superior controller by the only metric that matters, performance.

And here I was thinking that, where it comes to games, fun was the metric that matters.

Show me the first guy to win a fighting game tournament using a keyboard and I'll agree with you.

There are more types of games than FPSes and MMOs.

True, but talking about just FPSes would be on topic, since the article is about Valve. They are a company that, to date, has made two games that aren't an FPS. One of those games was Alien Swarm, a top-down shooter that still uses the mouse to aim. The other is DOTA 2, a MOBA that hasn't officially launched yet.

Look into what a 'hitbox' is. There is some debate about them being fair or not. Essentially its a standard tourny joystick (so granted not keyboard buttons) with the 4 way directions mapped to buttons rather than a stick. The old street fighter style things are usually 4 button clickers so it translates to buttons easily.

The plus is that there is no throw time that a joystick has, plus 100 guaranteed input for complex movements.

Following this precedent of a hitbox, I would say a keyboard user could very ea

I'm not sure that there's any competetive advantage to not getting somewhere as fast as possible in an FPS. For other games where analog control is appropriate, we have analog joysticks, steering wheels, paddle controllers, and trackballs.

For one thing, movement with the keyboard lacks the nuance of an analog joystick. When I move in a console game, I control the speed of the movement. With a keyboard, it's either run or stop--on or off. And the mouse, while offering more speed and precision on a large display than a joystick, feels artificial to me (sorry to those of you who love the ultra-quick headshot).

The keyboard is a terrible controller. Its only saving grace is the sheer number of keys it has... I have at least one FPS where every key on the left side of the keyboard is assigned to something (WASD for moment, ~ for game console, 1-5 for weapons, Tab for scorboard, Q for quick switch, E to call for a Medic, R to reload, F to taunt, G to use an action item, ZXC for "voice" menus, V for push to talk voice chat, CTRL to crouch, spacebar to jump.. pretty sure shift and caps lock have things assigned to th

I own a Wii, an Xbox 360, and a PC, and game on them all, to varying degrees.

The Wii remote is uncomfortable to hold and point at the screen for long periods of time. Also, it is not very accurate. Or perhaps my hands just aren't as steady as other people's hands.

Of my three systems, the Wii is my least favorite, by quite a margin, but not because of the power of the machine itself, but because of the Wii remotes. They only seem good for a very narrow section of games.

I agree on the movement aspect, and it's why I use a 360 controller as a gamepad in some games. Some games just work better with a joystick (or even d-pad) than they do on a keyboard. On the other hand, other games are much better with the traditional KB/M setup.

Okay, so let's try improving K/M to fix those weaknesses, rather than trying to start from scratch, or trying to improve the gamepad.

Keyboard, with analog key inputs. That lets you control your movement rate more finely. For general typing, that might control the repeat rate - or it could just be ignored, treated as a digital input. That would also necessitate removing any limits on simultaneous keypresses - current keyboards often cannot handle more than 5-8 keys at once (with exceptions).

Keyboard and mouse haven't changed significantly over the years because they work well. Until we have mind control , I doubt anybody will come up with something better than keyboard and mouse anytime soon.

As for built quality, well, that's another thing. Arguably, the quality of keyboards has constantly declined since Model M except for remakes like Unicomp and keyboards with Cherry switches. It would be great if Valves console had a great keyboard but somehow I doubt it...

They do work well. But something else might work better, especially for gaming which is where Valve is interested. Lots of 3rd party tools try various little things, like built-in displays, but without a standardization and widespread support they are mostly just gimmicks. The wheel example is an interesting one. Wheels work just fine for moderately light-weight vehicles traveling over relatively smooth terrain. But tanks use treads, not wheels, because that is better for what they need. We won't know if so

console controllers, for example, are actually better for some games, such as platformers or racers, though not for FPS or RTS games

As I tried to type a long post on my Nexus 7 tablet a few days ago, I realized something. Pressing buttons on a keyboard or a gamepad is like touch typing, as the player memorizes where the buttons are relative to his thumbs' resting positions and uses the feel of the edges of the buttons to adjust his hand positioning. Using a mouse or touch screen, on the other hand, is like hunt and peck: see something on the screen, move your mouse, and click. Aiming in FPS and selecting units in RTS are nearly ideal hunt and peck tasks; platformers and fighting games need touch typing because movement is relative to the player's current position.

Please explain how contextual controls would work at the speed of a Street Fighter IV or Super Smash Bros. Melee match.

The only games that the game pad actually excels at are games where you have to move around but the camera is static.

In other words, gamepads work well for games whose action happens in a 2D plane, the kind that can be made most practically on a tiny budget. Yet the curators of platforms that come with gamepads are dead set against allowing games made on tiny budgets on their platform. (See Bob's Game.)

The only reason those types of games map so much better to their ideal controllers are because no ones really took the time to figure out an intuitive scheme for mouse and keyboard that works just as well or better.

Some platformers work well with "emulator controls" on a keyboard: arrow keys to move, X to jump, Z to u

In case you're not just trying to CMTP [tvtropes.org], let me rephrase: Wheels not covered by treads work just fine for moderately light-weight vehicles traveling over relatively smooth terrain. But tanks use treads over their wheels because that is better for what they need.

"Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There's a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked"

Yeah, aside from the Wiimote and Kinect and every other product that has changed the input in a meaningful way.

It sounds to me like Valve is interested in developing a gaming laptop with Kinect-like functionality built in. That is an interesting idea, but it's nothing particularly revolutionary. Successful products are seldom revolutionary, so that's not a bad thing. Good luck Valve, with whatever it is you're doing!

Yes, exactly. Nintendo was the first company to make motion control both cheap enough and good enough at the same time, much like Apple was with music players and touch smartphones (granted it took Apple a bit of trial and error to get the pricing right for the iPods and the iPhone). The idea for the iPhone did not originate inside Steve Job's head. Remember how we knew approximately how the iPhone was going to look and function two years before Apple revealed it?

I am one of those geeks who bring their own hardware to the office simply because I point blank refuse to work with cheap shit. In other industries this is perfectly normal, chefs, bakers, carpenters they all got their own tools and only a fool would try to come between a pro and his tools.

Yet in the office, people work behind the cheapest monitors that some boss could find and mice and keyboards that would be overpriced if they were free, which they were and which they are.

Come on. Jeri Ellsworth [wikipedia.org] is working for them. I doubt she's writing PC games, duh. There was a hackaday article [hackaday.com] about that a quarter ago. I don't follow this industry and even I've known about it for a while. Sigh.

Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years.

The trackball? The joystick (which seems to almost be dead hardware compared to a decade ago)

I'm more of a old-school RPG / military strategy guy but for FPS I've occasionally wondered what a right hand joystick left hand trackball FPS interface would be like. Foot pedals would be interesting for a FPS interface, not some annoying wii-type thing where you have to jog to force exercise, but just constant pressure to move or jump or strafe or whatever.

Perhaps one arguable reason for the lack of innovation compared to periods in the past is the expense. I don't mean to frame this exclusively as a monetary issue. Dealing with patents and the current litigious climate I imagine it to be extremely difficult for the smaller guys to get a foothold who have traditionally been the ones to drive innovation. I realize this isn't the entire picture or else we wouldn't have exciting things happening on KickStarter. None the less I'm pleased to hear Valve taking an i

...after recent comments from Valve re. developing on Linux (easy to port to, better performance than DirectX, ability to work with / feedback commits to driver devs, etc) — plus Gabe Newell recently calling Windows 8 a catastrophe — I would not be at all surprised if we saw a Valve-branded Linux-based games console in the near future.

You wanna make a game computer, super great, but I don't see their reasoning

"We're frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space"

what? video cards keep getting more powerful and add hardware accelerated features, CPU's as well, monitors get bigger and sometimes more pixels and you the developers have damn near infinite amounts of ram and storage. Its not the lack of innovation in hardware, its YOU damn developers who wont get past your XBOX360 specs from over a half decade ago and never looking at anything else.

"'Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years."

Cause for many types of game it works very well

"There's a real void in the marketplace,"

Where? Its not in computer hardware, you just ignore that it exists, Its not in computer input cause you can get or adapt any type of controller imaginable for a PC, the only void I have seen is that theres not that much software thats little more than an after thought console port.

Wouldn't it be spiffy if Valve took their hardware plaform and came up with a Steampunk option for it? Obviously the basic low-cost version will have to be basic and low-cost. But they're in an obvious position to sell a Steampunk version for a premium.

That depends on how Valve chooses which developers are allowed to release games on Steam. Will it be as open as Google Play Store or Mac App Store, or will it be as closed as Xbox Live Arcade and Wii Shop?

The comments about the mouse and keyboard are a McGuffin to mislead people as they develop a controller.

Do you mean MacGuffin [tvtropes.org], the thing in a story defined by the fact that everyone seeks it, or do you mean a red herring [tvtropes.org]?

I don't get it myself. I switch between dual analog and mouse/keyboard constantly. Each have their advantages, but for a single player open world game like Skyrim I tend to like the dual sticks.

The console controllers could use more buttons, though... maybe a row of 10 up top like function keys on a keyboard, or build the little keyboard that you can currently plug into an XBox controller into it from the launch so developers will use it for stuff. Make it slide out or something.